Why Career Must Be Everywhere

Meredith Metsker:

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Career Everywhere podcast. I’m your host Meredith Metsker, and today I am joined by Mike Summers. He’s the Associate Vice President of the Gateway Career Center at Lafayette College. Thank you for being here. Mike

Mike Summers:

Meredith, thank you so much. I’m really excited to spend some time with you today, especially since it’s not really sunny here in Easton today, so it’ll be sunny here as part of our conversation. So really looking forward to it. Thank you for having me.

Meredith Metsker:

I’m really glad to have you and I’m excited to talk to you today about why career must be everywhere. Obviously that’s a concept that we’re really big fans of here on the Career Everywhere podcast, and I know you have a lot of thoughts and ideas around Career Everywhere, why it’s important, and then how to implement it. But before I get into my questions, Mike, is there anything else you’d like to add about yourself, your background or your role at Lafayette?

Mike Summers:

Sure. Well, maybe just a little bit about Lafayette. So we are 2,700 students, all undergrad, liberal arts and engineering. And we also happen to have, as small as we are, Division I athletics and approximately 23% of our students are student athletes as well. And I would be remiss if I didn’t say I have the privilege and honor of leading a team of 13 dedicated professionals here in the career center that work with our students as we put them literally at the center of everything we do. Just a bit snippet about my background. So I am not a lifer in higher ed, so I’ve been in higher ed just about eight years now and came out of industry mainly in sales, management, leadership as well as some time in executive search over 25 years.

So a little bit of a different balance in terms of things that I bring to the role here at Lafayette. And that’s a little bit about that.

Meredith Metsker:

I’m curious, what brought you into career services then?

Mike Summers:

It’s a great question. So my alma mater came knocking about eight years ago, was looking to fill a role in their employer relations area and were specifically looking for somebody from industry to bring some diversity into the team and to bring some perspective from outside in terms of what talent acquisition was looking for and thought my blended background would sort of offer that balance to the talented professionals that were there that have been in higher ed for a long time. And it’s hard to turn down your alma mater when it comes calling.

So it was a real great opportunity and I fell in love and as they say, the rest is history. Here I am and I fully intend on spending the rest of my career here supporting students. I found my passion and my life’s work here, so very grateful for that having happened.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s very cool. It seems like it’s a good fit for you.

Mike Summers:

Thank you.

Meredith Metsker:

All right, well, before I get into my more specific questions, I want to kick us off with a question I ask all of our guests and that’s what does Career Everywhere mean to you?

Mike Summers:

Meredith, that’s a great question. So I would say it means a couple of things. It means at the center of the career center we have to be the champions of advancing Career Everywhere more formally throughout our relationships across the campus and across the institution with faculty, student leadership groups, other staff members. And we really have to do that with intentionality. I mean, reality is career advice happens all over the campus, not just in Hogue Hall where we sit in the career center. It’s happening everywhere. We really have to embrace it, advance it, and really make sure that we are everywhere where the students are.

And as well I would say to scale a lot of that work and to make it available truly, not just everywhere but anytime, we have to leverage technology, that’s how we scale it. And by bringing the information that we have not only to be delivered in face-to-face interaction in Hogue Hall, that it’s accessible to all of our stakeholders and our students literally anywhere at any point in time. And so when you say Career Everywhere, those are sort of the three things that I put as our center in terms of Career Everywhere and what it means to me.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s a great answer. Like you said, it’s about being anywhere or serving anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Mike Summers:

Absolutely.

Meredith Metsker:

Absolutely. So you never know when someone’s going to have a career question.

Mike Summers:

And a lot of times they have those questions when our doors are not open. And what you want to do is you want to make sure, as in most of our situations at our institutions, we’re optional, meaning students can walk a campus for four years not engaged with a career center. There’s no penalty that hits a transcript in most instances. So we are truly optional. So if we’re only available to them when our doors are open and not when they need it, then we’re really doing a disservice to students because they need it and want it when they need it, and we need to make sure it’s there and available for them to access.

And there’s no question at some point in time they’ll come in our office, but they’ll come in already on a headstart and be grateful that they were able to get connected and get started where they were. So I think it’s really, really important and that’s a monumental shift in the space that we operate in, right, Meredith? It used to be we want to control things, we want everything to be where we are and the holders of all the information, and we just simply can’t be that way anymore. We just can’t. Today’s student is very, very different and we need to meet them where they are if we’re going to be successful.

And I think those of us who do, our students will be much more successful and that’s the ultimate goal. That’s why we do what we do, why we’re in the work that we’re in, in my view.

Meredith Metsker:

Absolutely. So I would love to dig into this Career Everywhere concept a little bit more. So in your opinion and in your experience, why must career… Excuse me, why must career be everywhere? Why is that so important?

Mike Summers:

It’s a really great question. It’s really important, and I will tell you it is really a centerpiece for me and my team here, Meredith, at Lafayette is talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not right. And so we have to increase the social capital and the access to all students realizing that when I think most any institutional, Lafayette certainly falls in this category. We have students that come here and they’re on this continuum of the knowledge that they bring with us, not academic knowledge, but knowledge about having…

They could be first generation students, they could be international students, they could be students that don’t have parents that are able to guide them and support them and give them those nuggets before they get here. And then we have others who have tons of those nuggets in their bag, if you will. So they’re not at the same place. So in order for us to make sure we are adequately and intentionally serving every student and making sure that that talent that’s evenly distributed, we shift that scale towards making sure the opportunities for them are equal. I say my day that I envision one time is when we all come up and we’re getting ready to start a race that every single student is at the same starting line, whereas now they’re not.

And we have to make sure we keep inching those who are not closer and closer to that starting line. So it truly is an equitable and equal playing field. One of the things that’s really exciting, I’ll tease you in a little bit, and those that are listening, is in October we’re going to be doing a modern mentorship networking event here where we’re going to talk all about what building social capital is and how you can build your network in a way that is very much just the basics of what they need to do and how they need to practice it. And when they do, they’ll see A, it’s not really hard, B, now they know how and now they know the why and now they can go do it for themselves.

So really excited about that and that really is something that I feel very strongly about, that we make things as equitable as we can be. And that’s one of the centerpieces of why it is so important that career is everywhere across this campus.

Meredith Metsker:

Right. That makes a lot of sense. And I am curious, in your mind, what’s the role of career services in all of this? How can they go about implementing Career Everywhere?

Mike Summers:

Well, first of all, we’ve got to be front and center. We are the ones, we’re the stewards, we’re the champions of this whole initiative. And so I think it starts, at Lafayette with me as the leader. I have to set the tone. I have to set the tone for my staff. I have to set the tone with leadership across the campus and every opportunity I’m trying to come in contact with senior leadership, with faculty. I attend all faculty meetings. With our athletic coaches to really be advocating the importance of career being everywhere and need their support and helping us make sure it’s everywhere.

And then also at the same time being advocates for the work we do and directing students to us. So it literally becomes this community of people all across the campus that is providing advice and guidance to the students, but knowing that we’re that hub of where all of that starts. And so I think it starts with the leader permeates down through the team and then out across the campus. And the other thing I would say is it’s not static. It has to be constant. It has to be something you’re doing all the time because that’s the only way we’ll continue to advance the work we do.

Because not everybody will be an immediate champion, but boy, you create one more champion, one more champion, who then become advocates for you. That becomes the way that we tackle this and make sure that truly it is everywhere and continues to be everywhere and we advance it.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. I think it makes sense to start in career services, build the champion network, and then those folks will tell their colleagues, students who come to the career center will tell their friends. And all of a sudden this network gets bigger and bigger until it becomes this whole ecosystem. I’ve heard a few guests mention that concept.

Mike Summers:

100%. Building the ecosystem is absolutely key for sure.

Meredith Metsker:

So in your mind, what would the ideal Career Everywhere scenario look like? Paint me a word picture.

Mike Summers:

Oh my goodness. If I think about some of the things we’ve done here at Lafayette. So when I arrived here, all of our counselors or career coaches were generalists, meaning they had all four class years in all majors. And that’s asking somebody to be way too knowledgeable in many areas that there’s just no possible way that they can be. So we also realized we had an asset here at Lafayette at our size of our faculty. Our students really do listen to their faculty members and they are very tight with their faculty members. So we realigned our counselors to be aligned by majors so that they would have cohorts of students in those majors and then liaise into the faculty and connect with them and create partnerships.

So we created a faculty point of contact in each one of those areas that they meet with at least twice each semester and start to build those relationships and build those advocates. So we start to build that out through the different areas across the campus in terms of the academic departments and the program departments. So that was one thing. The other thing that we did too is we launched the uConnect platform a little over a year ago to help us integrate all of our technologies that help us scale into a career communities model through uConnect. And that is how our students are receiving a bunch of their communications and receive their information.

And we couldn’t scale it without the technology. And I think one of the analogies that I give, Meredith, and some of my friends will sort of chuckle at me sometimes I give analogies. Because I think it allows people that don’t truly understand the deepness of your work to be able to at least visually see what you’re talking about. And I said it’s like the Chick-fil-A model. So Chick-fil-A just wants you to eat the sandwich. They want you to buy the sandwich. So you can come into the dining room and buy the sandwich, or you can go through the drive-through and get the sandwich, or you can do DoorDash or GrubHub.

If we think of the careers, the same thing, they come into the career center, but our drive-throughs and our other delivery methods have to be there because it’s about allowing our students who are our ultimate customer to receive the information in places where they are in the ways they want to receive it. And so I think as you think about that, those are the tenets of Career Everywhere here at Lafayette and what we’ve instituted over the course of the last year, year and a half. So I think it’s really, really important that we do that with intentionality.

Meredith Metsker:

So you’ve mentioned a couple strategies that you’re using to implement Career Everywhere. There’s having your career counselors be a little more specialized. You launched the uConnect platform. What other strategies or best practices are you using to implement Career Everywhere?

Mike Summers:

So one of the things through all our matriculating first years that we started to do about a year ago, and we’re really going to advance it this year. Each one of our incoming first years, because we really have to start to think about first years because that’s the part where they start to launch here. And then if you get every first year class, you will have them really on their way as they get into their sophomore, junior, and senior year is we have a extended orientation program and they have Leo leaders.

And so there’s approximately 75 of those, and they have students in those cohorts that we are meeting with those leaders and we are talking about all of the tenets of our technologies and our platforms and the way they want to first get their students involved with Gateway. And so we work with those leaders to have training, so sort of a train the trainer. We work with them to get the first years to engage with us. And we saw a significant increase when we implemented that last year in terms of first year students engaging with us. And we think in year two we will start to see that engagement be even higher.

They’re going to do one cool thing this year. Have you heard of the Amazing Race? Which is something where the career center will be a stop on that Amazing Race, that every single one of our matriculating first years will actually stop here, have an opportunity to meet their individual career counselors and get some information as they leave here. So really trying to make sure that we are engaging with students when they first get here. And that’s an additional way beyond what I’ve shared with our counselor alignment and the uConnect platform that we’re truly trying to get Career Everywhere and integrated right from the very beginning.

Meredith Metsker:

I suppose that’s especially important when you do have that opt-in model. Trying to really get the word out I imagine is super critical.

Mike Summers:

100%. And now my ultimate goal is what you just talked about is to have career education, career development, experiential learning embedded into the student experience. This is sort of that first step to get that ball rolling and then ultimately we will pull that in. So it is a part of every single student’s experience, and it is no longer optional. It is part of what’s expected and something that we can “sell” as we are attracting other students to the college or wanting to come to Lafayette.

Meredith Metsker:

I hadn’t even thought about the recruitment angle, but that is important. That’s a big selling point.

Mike Summers:

Absolutely.

Meredith Metsker:

I kind of wanted to back up to something you were saying earlier about the social capital piece, how students come in with varying levels of social capital. And you mentioned you’re doing this modern mentorship program. But I am curious, how else do you go about trying to even that playing field or trying to, I don’t know if teach social capital is the right phrasing, but you know what I mean? How do you go about trying to make that more even?

Mike Summers:

There’s a couple of things we do. One of our career counselors here is aligned with all of our underrepresented groups here on campus. And again, speaking about going to where they are, I think you can do this program that we’re going to do in October. And I think that’s one important event that you can do, but it is an event and not something that you’re fully embedding into the work you do. So I think the fact that we have someone that goes out to those underrepresented groups and works with them and connects with them and is out of our office most of the time, and with those groups, I think that advances it a lot.

Is it going to get us there all the way? No, but we have advanced it in great lengths and in great ways since we’ve had that alignment there. And I think that’s really important. It’s one additional way that you do. And as we talked about a little bit before, it’s not static, you iterate, you do that plus or you do something else by listening to how well we’re doing and seeing the results of what we’re getting and then making a decision. Do we double down on that or do we continue to go that direction or do we need to think about it in some other ways?

And I think you ask those cohorts, how are we doing and where else do we need to be rather than trying to be in a room, trying to figure out where we think we should be. So I think it’s a little bit of both. So that’s something else that I think helps us a great deal. Raise that social capital for those students.

Meredith Metsker:

And I wanted to go back to something else you’re talking about too, and that it’s important in terms of implementing Career Everywhere to really engage your other stakeholders on campus, build that ecosystem as we talked about. So how have you and your team gone about getting buy-in from those other stakeholders across campus to help you implement Career Everywhere?

Mike Summers:

I think that’s a really great question. I think it is consistently being visible and consistently outreaching to folks where we say go where students are. We need to go where those other stakeholders are, right? So we have to show up to all the admissions events, which we do. We have to show up to athletic events, which we do. We have to show up to productions and other major events where those stakeholders are and be visible. I think especially on a campus, the size of Lafayette, it’s very much a community field, as I mentioned before. We’re 2,700 students, so realizing we’re different than some.

But in that case, what works best for us is being seen, being visible. I mentioned go to faculty meetings. I’m invited to faculty meetings and I go early so that I can network and connect with those stakeholders there as well. And I think when you do that, those are the ways that you advance your work. Because really at the base of it all, it’s about building relationships and when you build relationships, we’re all people, regardless of how many letters we have after the end of our name. That at the end of the day we do things through relationships and through connections.

And by being out there and doing those things intentionally and allowing and allocating time for that is the way that you are successful in those endeavors. And that’s what’s worked for us here at Lafayette is being very intentional and being literally everywhere, if you can be.

Meredith Metsker:

Taking the everywhere part of Career Everywhere very literally,

Mike Summers:

100%. Yes, absolutely.

Meredith Metsker:

I want to dig into these concepts of showing up and being visible a little bit more. You mentioned a few places where you and your team show up, but when you do that, are you having conversations with people in that moment? Do you follow up later? How are you using that visibility to advance Career Everywhere and advance your work?

Mike Summers:

I think yes and yes, right? So I think you’re having those conversations when you’re going out and you’re going to those events and you’re having meetings with your various constituents. And I think you have to continue to advance those. And then what will happen is, and I’ll give you a primary example, is I started to do a couple of things with some of our athletic teams on a request basis. And then other coaches talk to other coaches, and then you’re getting calls from those other coaches. You talk with a faculty member who talks with another faculty member and then they’re calling to ask you for that same support.

So I think again, it goes to individual meetings, following up, getting referrals. We talk to students about getting referrals. We too get referrals and we have to follow up on those referrals and we have to take advantage of that as well as the senior leadership team. So I intentionally try and meet with the senior leadership team as often as I can, including our president when I’m allowed. To continue to advance that work, making sure that when she is in places, she is also advocating for career. When it’s with alumni events or when it’s other special events. That she has a full understanding of the work that we’re doing so that she then in turn can communicate that in those meetings.

So I think it’s constant and it’s in all of those places that I think it’s really, really important to be visible and to be present and make that investment in that time and in those relationships. And I think when you do that without a doubt, I think you see that return on investment of that time, payback, at least I certainly have here at Lafayette. I expect others do as well. But that would be some of the key things and the key secret sauce, if you will, to make some of that work.

Meredith Metsker:

I’m curious, what has been some of those results or that ROI that you’ve seen from all these efforts?

Mike Summers:

So I think one of the things, what I mentioned earlier is we did launch the uConnect platform for us to integrate all of our technologies and all our information into a platform that’s visible 24/7, 365. And so for example, two metrics that we track quite strongly, there’s users and then the sessions that are being used when they’re on there. And I’m looking at a three-month period year over year in those two categories and areas. From a user standpoint, we saw an overall increase of almost 97% in terms of the number of users using our platform.

And in terms of the number of sessions, we saw a 90% increase in that same three month period year over year, in terms of the different sessions that those users were engaged in. And all of those users were not students, by the way, many of those users were faculty. Many of those users were administrators and staff who were being shown the platform, all of the areas that they can access their work and share with their students as well as access themselves.

And so we are seeing a tremendous increase in those areas by leveraging that and seeing that in the traffic and in the results of how this platform has enabled us to sort of coalesce everything into one particular place where they can have access to all that information.

Meredith Metsker:

Wow, those are some really awesome results.

Mike Summers:

We are very pleased with them. But I’ll also say we also have dedicated two people to managing this platform for us. Because as I mentioned before, nothing that you can do in any world is static, right? You have to constantly be iterating and iterating and iterating. And so staying on that and being very intentional about changing things up to find out who your constituents are and how they’re using it and how we’re succeeding and how we’re not succeeding is in large part, in addition to the career communities model why we have seen such successful results. And I expect we’ll continue to with that dedicated effort towards working with that platform.

Meredith Metsker:

I was going to say, your platform is really fleshed out with the career communities. You have identity and affinity communities, a ton of resources. So I guess it makes sense that there’s two people helping to manage that.

Mike Summers:

100%. I mentioned the faculty points of contact, they go out and meet with faculty and we’re showing the website and all the updates so that they too can have that tool at their fingertips to share with students, doing the same thing with the athletic coaches, doing the same thing with the groups that I mentioned that we go out to. And it’s a work in progress. It’s constant, but as long as you continue to work at it and work at it, it’ll become something that everybody across the community or most everybody is aware of that exists as a resource.

I’ve actually had a couple of my colleagues in other areas tease me a little bit about how great this site is and how did you get this great website and we need something like that for us. And I said, “Well, let’s come meet and I’ll show you how to advocate for those resources by showing what it can do and what the impact that it can have.” So I even have others across the campus and other areas that are a little bit jealous of this. So because of the way in which it works and the way it allows us to do our work.

Meredith Metsker:

Well, that’s always nice to hear, I’m sure.

Mike Summers:

Absolutely.

Meredith Metsker:

I want to go back to the thing you said at the very beginning, how talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. So you’ve touched on several ways that your team works to facilitate opportunity, but can you just dig into that a little bit more? How are you facilitating more opportunities for more students so it is more fair, more equitable?

Mike Summers:

It’s a really great question, Meredith. I mean a couple of things. One of the things that as we look at the technology platforms that we engage with, we are working with technology platforms who are dedicated to democratizing opportunity and making sure that we are providing access across the academy in ways that elevate the ability for students to get ahold of that information and advance themselves personally. I think the other thing that we need to absolutely do too is we absolutely need to be very intentional about realizing, I mentioned a little bit earlier where we need to go to be in those places where we are truly elevating the opportunity for all.

And I think those are a couple of things that we’re doing. And I think it’s a constant effort to make sure that we’re recognizing each and every class that’s coming in, where are our opportunities, where do we need to spend more time where we can help advance that. And make sure that we are doing everything we can every single day, both in our individual one-on-one appointments and in the technologies we use to share information and the conversations we have. To make sure we are doing our very best to elevate everybody.

I mean, I will give an example, one of the reasons. When you use the word networking in a networking night, to those students that don’t have that social capital, that’s very intimidating. Because immediately what comes to mind is I’m in a dark room, everybody’s dressed to the nines with these big name tags, and I walk in there and I have no idea where to start. And that is very intimidating. There’s lots of imposter syndrome that goes with that.

Really what networking is about is connecting in conversations and being able to have those conversations that students build confidence to be able to articulate something they need help with or a way in which somebody can help them, and then that person can open their network to them. Well, that has nothing to do with a suit, nothing to do with a formal room, nothing to do with a giant name tag. It just has something to do with how do you break it down into a way that every single student can do this. They just need to be taught what it is, how to do it, and then put them in a situation to do that.

And I think the more that you can create and listen in those areas and there’s those things that are creating those barriers for students and remove them. That is the way in which you’re going to truly advance, increase folk’s social capital. That’s how you’re going to spread the ability for everybody to be able to know what and how to do it. And I’ve always said, I’m a very competitive person by the way. But if I’m a competitive person, I’m an athlete, I want to play teams better than I am because that’s how I elevate my game. And I would say the same thing is true if we elevate all students, will it create more competition for me as a student around an opportunity?

Of course it will, but I’ll also probably raise my game too. And how’s that ever a bad thing? Sort of the phrase, arising tide rises all boats. I mean, I think that is absolutely very, very true. So you just have to dedicate the work you do every single day to advancing that mission, knowing that we’re here to serve 2,700 students that are on the footprint of this campus and do so in a way that helps level that playing field and elevate them up to where others are. I think it’s a philosophy and something that’s ingrained in the work you do.

Meredith Metsker:

Well said. That’s really incredible.

Mike Summers:

Thank you.

Meredith Metsker:

I am curious, as you work through all of these different programs, these different initiatives, how are you measuring success? How are you making sure that you’re reaching different populations? Or if you’re not, how do you make adjustments? I’m just curious how you kind of measure that process.

Mike Summers:

It’s a really great question and I wish I could tell you there’s a lot we can do in real time. Unfortunately, as many know, higher education is not data rich and just in time data and information. Some of it we are able to, right? The metrics we’re able to pull out out of our technology platforms, afford us a little bit more of that ability to check and see on a more frequent basis how well we’re doing. On a larger scale, I’m pulling it back, we do an office annual report every year. And it’s roughly 50 pages where we literally are taking all of our metrics out of all of our systems and we’re comparing them to prior years.

So that ultimately when we sit down and we’re putting forth the plan for the next year, we’re really looking at a lot of those metrics and saying, “Where are we succeeding? Where are the opportunity areas and what do we need to do to adjust in those areas?” And then as I mentioned before, it’s not about three or four of our own team sitting alone in a room determining what that is. We also want to pull in the constituents that we’re trying to serve and say, “Where are we hitting the mark? Where are we not hitting the mark? And how do we get better? How do we advance and be more successful at what we’re doing?” And we try and do that as much as we possibly can and with intentionality.

So that’s a little bit of how we measure coming out of the technology platforms. But then on a larger scale, it’s through a larger annual report. And the other thing is what’s interesting too is you have to be very careful with some of that data because so much is moving so fast in this world that as we change and evolve, you’ll notice some metrics in areas go down and other areas go up. Well, it could be this one went down, this one went up. And I’ll give you an example. You’ve probably heard of Career Tracks where you take students into cities and you let them explore industries and explore the cities and get a feel for that.

Well, COVID obviously knocked all of that off, but we had a choice to say, “We’re going to pause Career Tracks and not do them or wait. We have this virtual technology, let’s do them.” Well, what we discovered through the course of doing them by force because of COVID, is we discovered that there were no more financial barriers to participation. There was no more athletes who couldn’t leave campus that couldn’t participate. There was no longer if a student was an international student living on the West Coast, can’t do it because they’re not here physically. All those barriers went away.

And so what we discovered is in utilizing that technology, [inaudible 00:29:06] students to really participate in a whole bunch of different areas. Whereas before, we might have said, “Nope, let’s not do that.” So what we ended up seeing was the numbers in Career Tracks went way up, but if you didn’t have that asterisk in there, knowing it’s because we flipped it virtual and allowed greater access. You might say, “Why’d that go up?” Conversely, we didn’t do a lot of in-person networking events.

Well, those went down. So you sort of have to look at those in certain ways, but be willing to notice in order to make things go up, some things must come down instead of having to stay with the same things you’ve done all along. And that’s the iterate and innovate and continue to do new things so that you can advance the work you do.

Meredith Metsker:

I feel like COVID forced a lot of change, in some cases for the better

Mike Summers:

Without a doubt. I’m not sure I want to go through that as fast and that monumental change every couple of years. But what I will say, as I said to my team, this is one of the things that I worked real hard to emphasize with them at the end of that year, year and a half, if you will, when we really started to come out of. All the things that they did that supported and helped our students, and when they saw that list of everything that they were able to do during that time period, they really sort of took a breath and went, “Wow, we did a lot.”

And I’m like, this is in a world where oftentimes arguably, I get a little flack for this, is we’re resistant to change as an industry and as a work that we do, but this sort of forced it. And so I said, let’s keep that same mindset of innovation and change, just maybe not quite as rapid and quite as intense, but you know you can do it because you not only did it, you did it extremely well and we learned a lot of things. So I think that’s true of the work we do each and every year around social capital increase and everything we need to constantly iterate and constantly adjust.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. I’m curious, I guess what’s on the horizon for you and your team? Do you have any future initiatives or strategies?

Mike Summers:

Not a one.

Meredith Metsker:

Anything you’d like to share?

Mike Summers:

Not a one, no. As I mentioned, I think we’re constantly looking at ways, and I’m constantly looking at ways, but got to balance as the leader, not to force too much change. But you certainly want to be thinking about how can we better do the work we do? How can we scale more of the work we do? And I sort of say we need to innovate, innovate, innovate. So with change happening in a rapid pace, we have to change and adapt as well. Our students are and our students will. And if we don’t, we won’t be serving them in the ways in which we need to serve them.

And I say, “Guys, let’s embrace it and let’s have fun with it.” It can be exhausting of course, but it can also be very exhilarating at the same time, knowing that something you took a huge risk on, it went really well. So I’m a risk-taker, a calculator risk-taker, but I also want to bring the team along in those change moments where we do it together, right? Because anything we can do together, and I said, “The one thing you can control is your attitude towards that change. And if your attitude is really positive, chances are the glass is going to be half full, not half empty.”

I just believe if you come into it with the right attitude and the right approach and you come together as a team, there’s really nothing you can’t do within reason. So I think if you ask me what’s on the horizon, yes, there are things on the horizon. We’ll continue to invest in technologies that allow us to scale the work we do and reach folks that we can’t currently reach. And we will continue to invest in areas that support our students. Mentioned the event we’re going to do in October, this is something I’d like to do every two years.

So it gives every single student here two chances at it so they can do that. I also want to engage young alumni who have so much to offer our students. I don’t have any one particular thing, but I would say if you were to ask me that five to six year question, two things that I would love to see. Number one, I think we need to be in a building that better represents the totality of the work we do and showcases the work that we do. And I think number two is embedding career education, career development, experiential learning and the experience for every single student.

If we do those two things, then we will have there all of the things in place that ensures to the conversation we’ve had today increasing social capital for every student, trying to elevate the work we do in making it so that every student has access to it. That we’re leveraging the community of our faculty and our staff and our other leaders and our alumni. All of the assets that we have at our disposal and can involve them and leverage them in such a meaningful and impactful way.

And I think if we continue to evolve and work towards that then you start to pull all those pieces together in a way that, I wouldn’t say you’re unstoppable, but you’re pretty close. I mean, you’re pretty close. And so those are some of the things as I look forward and I look out to that I’m really excited about. And we’ll make the investments in those areas as they come. I hope that answers your question.

Meredith Metsker:

It does. It spawned another question, which is unsurprising. Former newspaper reporter here, I just always have questions.

Mike Summers:

Love it.

Meredith Metsker:

So I think you’ve touched on this a little bit, but you are mentioning you want to make career a part of every single student’s journey there at Lafayette. What are some ways that you’re thinking about in terms of making that happen? I’m guessing the faculty partnerships is a big one.

Mike Summers:

Yes. 100%. I think there’s different ways that folks are doing it now successfully, and I admire those institutions that are doing it successfully. As I look at Lafayette, I think it has to be something that it’s not just first years, right? In my view as we envision this out, it’s got to be every year, right? It’s got to be a touchpoint first year, second year, third year, fourth year. Because even depending upon what industries or what areas folks want to go into, they have different recruitment cycles. I mean, it varies all the time, and it’s changing and it’s evolving. So it’s literally not a static thing you do one year they have everything they need to go.

So I think we would have to, and we will create a program for first years sophomores, juniors, and seniors in terms of embedding the work that we do when students come and engage with us now, but embed it so that every student has the ability to take advantage of all those resources that we now make available to them, but make sure it’s done more intentionally in all four years. So as I socialize conversations here, those are the ways in which we will start to work towards making those things happen. Anytime you’re dealing with faculty and curricula, credit, not for credit, how do you do it? I’m less concerned with for credit, not for credit.

I’m more concerned with continuing to advocate for and gain champions for ensuring that we find delivery methods that everybody can agree to or at least agree that we should do this until there’s a better way to do it for all four years so that we are truly going back to that center core, Meredith. Elevating every student to a place where they have access to all of the information. They have access to all the tools. They’re building the skills. They’re getting ready, as they say, career readiness and life readiness, I would call it. And we’re doing everything we can that when it comes to that moment, they leave here feeling prepared.

They leave here feeling ready. They leave here having discovered themselves and what they want, and I’m intentional about since their first stop after Lafayette. Because there will be many stops after Lafayette, there will be many pivots. Many things in life are linear leading up to this, but career is usually anything but linear. And so I think it’s taking it out of that mindset. But if you prepare them with the baseline skills, then they’re ready for whatever life will throw at them and feel confident at what was thrown at them to be successful for them, whatever that is defined as.

One of the things, and this won’t surprise you, that I shockingly say to prospective families, and I say this out loud before I say it. I said, “What I’m going to tell you is going to really going to come across as a shock.” And then I said, “And then I’ll explain what I mean by this. I care zero, zero what any student does when they leave Lafayette. What I care deeply about, very passionately about is our role and the extent to which we help them discover what that is for them, and then align the resources and launch them with reckless abandon right toward it. I care very deeply about that.”

And I think, quite frankly, that’s our role, is to allow for that discovery and that exploration. That the things that they like, things they don’t like, test everything, be insanely curious and test everything. And that’s how you’re going to arrive at a point where you’re on a good point and in a good path to go after something that will ultimately, hopefully bring you fulfillment and satisfaction and lead a life of meaning and purpose. So those are sort of my guiding north stars, my passions behind the work we’re doing, the how we might do it. We’re starting to think about it, but it would be all four years. It has to be.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. I was thinking to myself as you were saying the answer, you are 100% in the right career path.

Mike Summers:

Well, thank you.

Meredith Metsker:

I can just feel the passion you have for this work.

Mike Summers:

100%. And I’m that perfect example, and I tell this story sometimes, Meredith, as I said, if you were to look at my resume, you would say, “What? So you started off in consumer products, then you went to medical device, then you went into executive search and you’re in higher ed.” But when you thread all of that together, I’m exactly where I should be, 100% where I should be. And I’m grateful that I’m here and feel very passionate about and very privileged to be able to do the work that I do with people who are so hardworking and on behalf of the students. And I just love it. I was walking out of the office yesterday, as you know, campuses are very quiet during the summertime.

[inaudible 00:38:54] Mr. Summers from across the quad. The student comes up and this book that I gave him that will be a part of this October event. And he says, “I read your book.” It’s not my book. “But I read the book that you gave me.” And he said, “I am already using it and I cannot wait for October.” And so when you get that on the way to the car, then you know you’re touching students in the way that you want to be touching them and reaching them in ways that are hoping to uplift what we’ve all been talking about throughout the course of the day. And that’s their ability to discover themselves and be successful.

Meredith Metsker:

Well, now I got to know, what was the book?

Mike Summers:

The book it’s called Super Mentors. It’s actually co-authored by a Georgetown professor and one of the co-CEOs of PeopleGrove, actually, Adam Saven. It’s called Super Mentors. And it’s how to say that you don’t need to be extraordinary and have a network already built in to know how to leverage what’s there in front of you. And it really distills it down into something that students can truly understand and put into practice. And so really excited about that. Really excited about the October event that we’ll be able to sort of showcase all of that.

Meredith Metsker:

And that’s that modern mentorship?

Mike Summers:

Yes.

Meredith Metsker:

Event, correct?

Mike Summers:

Yes.

Meredith Metsker:

Cool. I’ll be excited to hear how that goes.

Mike Summers:

I will definitely let you know.

Meredith Metsker:

So Mike, you’ve already shared… Yes, please do, keep me updated. So you’ve shared a lot of really great advice already, but I’m curious, do you have any other advice for career services leaders who want to implement Career Everywhere on their campuses?

Mike Summers:

Absolutely. And I’m going to steal from Nike here for just a second. Just do it. Just do it. And don’t let perfection prohibit progress, right? I’ve always said sometimes we want to find something that’s perfect, and so we don’t do anything until it’s perfect. First of all, there is no perfect. And the second thing just make progress in pursuit of perfection is what I say every day. Start small, build from there. I would say we’ve talked a little bit about it today, find champions across the campus. Everyone has champions. They’re there. You know who they are. Start with them. Build your network of champions and have them join you in your journey.

I think that’d be what I’d recommend. And then the other thing I would say too, and it’s certainly the case here, is leverage alumni. Alumni are one of the elements that so deeply want to, in most cases, support the institution. And I think they’re also that part of the institution that everybody listens to because they’re such a big part of the ecosystem. So if you can leverage alumni in addition to your faculty and staff and other colleagues, I would say those are the true assets that will help you advance your cause. But just do it and just make progress and pursue perfection is sort of my mantra.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. Don’t let perfection get in the way of progress. I think that’s a good thing for everyone to keep in mind.

Mike Summers:

100%. It’s on my board over here, so I look at it all the time.

Meredith Metsker:

Nice. I love that. All right, well I want to be mindful of our time here, so I’ll kind of start wrapping us up. But Mike, is there anything else that you would like to add that we haven’t covered?

Mike Summers:

Oh my goodness. I would just say, and you’ve heard me mention a couple of times today, innovate, innovate, innovate. With change happening all the time at a rapid pace, we just have to embrace it. I would say collaborate. One of the things I’m a big believer in is collaborating and sharing amongst ourselves. We’re in this space, in this privileged space where we get to support students. I’ve listened to a number of the podcast series of others of my colleagues across the country and I’ve learned things from them and I’ve pulled nuggets from them, and I hope maybe there’s one or two in here that they might pull from me.

I think as a collective, we can pull all those nuggets together and we can continue to improve and move forward the work we do and do so in a way that hopefully maybe lifts our entire ecosystem of higher education that is working to help support our students. So that’d be what I’d say. Pull those nuggets, share like crazy. We tell our students to be curious. We too need to be curious, ask lots of questions and share. And I think that’s the way not only elevate our own institutions, but will help others elevate theirs as well. So that’d be one other thing I would just add.

Meredith Metsker:

Well kind of on that note, if people would like to connect with you or learn more from you, where’s a good place for them to do that?

Mike Summers:

So they can definitely connect with me on LinkedIn. It’s Mike Summers. I will be the bald guy in the picture when you go on LinkedIn. So definitely connect with me on LinkedIn, would love to do that. I’m also on Twitter at [inaudible 00:43:38] so they can find me on Twitter as well. And then certainly they can use my email as well, which is summers, like the season, m@lafayette.edu. And I’d be happy and more than willing to connect and talk with anybody to share anything that I might that would be a nugget of value for them. And then I might ask them for one in return. So I’ll give and I’ll get, maybe.

Meredith Metsker:

Sounds like a good plan. And for those who are watching or listening, I’ll be sure to include links to Mike’s LinkedIn, his Twitter, and his email address that he just mentioned, along with the link to Lafayette’s virtual career center website that we were talking about earlier. So Mike, at the end of every interview, I like to do this answer a question, leave a question thing. So I’ll ask you a question that our last guest… I’ll ask you a question that our last guest left for you, and then you’ll leave a question for our next guest. So our last guest was Beverly Johnson of Arizona State University. And she left the following question for you, what’s the most creative career resource or program your department has implemented in the last year?

Mike Summers:

Thank you, Beverly, for such a heady question. I would say probably in the last year, what we call our gateway roadmaps, which are our roadmaps for each one of the four class years here, first year, sophomore, junior, senior. It is all based as well around the NACE career readiness competencies that we brand here, the Gateway eight. And we actually also got student input on this as well. Something I did not know before, the background music is called lo-fi. And we were told that that’s what students listen to when they study, and that was the music we should use as the background when we did our gateway roadmaps.

So who knew? That shows the value of pulling your audience into the conversation. So I would have to say in the last year, probably our gateway roadmaps. A lot of work from the staff went into that so that it shows the students each of their four-year roadmaps that they have as a guidepost through gateway in a way that’s engaging and in a way that allows them to do it in pretty short order. So I would say that’d be one of the things that we’ve done this last year.

Meredith Metsker:

Sounds great. And I love the little tidbit about lo-fi.

Mike Summers:

I know.

Meredith Metsker:

I don’t hardly know what that is, so I’m going to have to check that out.

Mike Summers:

There you go.

Meredith Metsker:

Apparently that’s what’s cool with the youths.

Mike Summers:

At least here at Lafayette, that’s what they’re using to study as background music. So learn from your audience as they say.

Meredith Metsker:

All right, I’m going to have to check that out. So Mike, what question would you like to leave for the next guest?

Mike Summers:

My question for the next guest would be, if you had one wish, what would it be?

Meredith Metsker:

I like it. Is this just for life, for work, for anything?

Mike Summers:

I would say maybe one for life and one for work. How about that? So they actually technically two [inaudible 00:46:35]

Meredith Metsker:

That’s a good one. That’s all right. I’ll allow it.

Mike Summers:

Thank you. Well, thank you very much.

Meredith Metsker:

Well, Mike, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. This was a really fun conversation about a topic that’s near and dear to our hearts here on the Career Everywhere podcast. So thank you so much again for sharing your time and your wisdom.

Mike Summers:

Well, thank you very much, Meredith. It’s been an absolute pleasure. I really enjoyed it. And again, thank you so much.